Restoring traditional CONGOLESE culture through ARTS and WORDS.

Is it possible to walk with confidence when the shadow of the past still makes one shudder ? Is it possible to be when one is not at peace with its origins ? How can one rewrite history when it has become synonymous with culture and identity and is worn daily ? Stakes are high, however the work of visual artist Asia NYEMBO Mireille who aims at reestablishing the raffia fibre in favour of the wax cloth has broader resonance. Beyond artistry, the installations and paintings of the Belgium-based Congolese artist highlight history’s unfortunate shortcomings and the imminent duty of memory and soul searching down to each to achieve.

Mayi.Arts : You were born in Kalemie (Congo) where you spent your first years, where does your passion for arts come from ?

Asia NYEMBO Mireille : I started drawing, aged 13. I can precisely remember the first time I handed a pencil to replicate a picture. I remember seeing how precise the final piece was and thinking maybe there was a way to explore there. I used to not speak so drawing became my voice, I thought it interesting to talk through images instead of using words. At that time, my goal was to become a doctor or a biologist something my father was very supportive of and I ended up graduating in biochemistry. I was still drawing but I was not considering going to art school at all. 

Facing conflicts and death early

A.N : The conflicts I have witnessed shaped the person that I am today and have had a major impact in my life. My youth has been marked by the separation of my parents but above all by chronic disease which required long periods of isolation in hospital where my only company was that of the nurses. When I was finally able to return to my family home, the Rwandan conflict broke out. I was only ten at the time. We had to move from our hometown and start again in a new town. I quickly became a target, to the point of being arrested, suspected to be a Rwandan. That day, I faced death. They had taken away all the Rwandans, some never come back. When I was sixteen, both of my parents died.

I had a lot on my plate for such a young age. I started using my pencil to externalise all those wounds that were living inside of me. Life conditions in Congo did not improve and it became very tough for me. Going to medical or biology school meant that I had to fund and support myself for seven years. This is when I decided to follow what my inner self was telling me and enrol in the Academy of Fine Arts of Kinshasa

The Academy of Fine Arts of Kinshasa

The artist dwelled into many explorations before finding her way as she recalls : “I first started in interior architecture which I liked. However, it was  limiting for self-expression. So I started attending various workshops to explore different styles. The point was really to bring out what was inside of me, not just put it on the outside but also pull myself out, find out how I could solve these problems and go beyond.”

M.A : Identity appears as a reoccurring notion through your work.

A.N : I grasped this notion of identity early in my work even though at that time I couldn’t precisely seize the notion. I was an outcast in Congo as I looked more like a Rwandan or  Indian. I knew my mother had Rwandan, Tanzanian and Indian lineage while my father was of Rwandan descents. All of this made me want to question myself. I then started to build my family history from my birth to then go back to the history of my father, the history of my mother then the history of my father's tribe and the history of my mother's tribe. Gradually, starting with my own lineage, I built the history of my country. I was able to trace back then the origins of my attraction to literature and architecture, answers to questions, why I do art and why I am Congolese. And what is the Congo? And what am I ?

During and after her studies in Kinshasa, Nyembo works in interior design and various related fields including in cinema.  However and as in any epic tale, comes an event that confronts our hero with the choice of accepting their mission and go headlong into the adventure or refusing it. And if there was a catalytic moment for Asia Nyembo, it would undoubtedly be that 8 March 2009, as she remembers. 

A.N : We were celebrating Women's Day and all women had to wear Dutch wax cloth, which I refused to do because of what it represented. I was  arrested for not complying. The fact that I raised my voice to defend myself, I understood that there was something wrong. Speaking with one of the policemen who had just arrested me, I explained him the whole history of the wax cloth, its origin. He was stunned as it was the first time he was hearing this. Same for the people around us. I understood at that moment how little of a collective consciousness we had in my own country. We were dressing ourselves without even knowing what we were putting on our skin. After this episode, I decided to dedicate a part of my life to art. An art not for me but to correct certain things that were happening around me and which mainly affected the culture of my country.

Following the road of raffia fibre 

Correction over deconstruction, making peace with your own history  in order to move forward, this is what Asia Nyembo insists on.

A.N : I always explain my work process starting from its origins. Raffia has an important value because it is through its fibre that I have created my two main materials of work: the dye and the pigment. My precise goal through this work is first to deconstruct culture as we see it today in Congo, in the way of thinking of the Congolese. The goal is not to go after culture as we perceive it today, that is to say from a material point of view, but more from a conceptual and conscious point of view. I have this feeling that my work can at least have an effect in terms of awareness to my fellow Congolese people, to promote the ancestral textile first and then the textile of today which is the result of foreign importation.

”When we go further we realise that several patterns we still wear today in African countries are patterns and motifs retracing the history of the Javanese people (!)”

Asia Nyembo engaged in an in-depth research work around textile. An almost scientific research that she materialised a few years later in 2017 when she joined a residency at TAMAT - Museum of Tapestry and Textile Arts in Tournai (Belgium.)

A.N : When I started my research on raffia fibre, I wanted to trace history through my own past, to know what was before the wax cloth. To answer this question, I had to study history, find out how this textile came to Africa. I found out that the wax was only copies of the Indonesian Batik created in Holland. Indonesians loved inscribing their culture on white cloth using beeswax. When we go further we realise that several patterns we still wear today in African countries are patterns and motifs retracing the history of the Javanese people (!) At the same time, I also discovered a lot of interesting ancestral textiles on which the symbols were not just strange designs, but real messages, incredible libraries of information. It is this wealth that I wanted to promote in favour of the wax loincloth. And to promote this ancestral textile, I looked into its raw material: the raffia fibre. 

My mother was from a water kingdom and lived by a lake while my ancestors were sailors and my father’s ancestors  were from a fire kingdom. I decided then to immerse and burn the fiber. I collected particles from the water, ashes from the fire.

“What to do with this hard, deep black fabric?”

Looking at those those particles in the water, I had the idea to transform them into a form of dye.  I created a mix suitable for raffia fiber, in ocher tones, another yellow. As for the ash, I eventually turned it into a strong, black pigment. Armed with the dye in one hand,  the pigment in the other, I was finally ready to express myself. And in those two elements, the history of my country. It was like bringing this ancestral fiber back into the contemporary world.

"Gather and rebuild this fabric because it will never leave Africa". It is now a part of us, deep in our roots, almost a second culture. This is how I have deconstructed to rebuild.

A.N : My first thought was to conceal the meaning of the wax loincloth. The most important thing was to erase those patterns. For two weeks I was haunted by the thought of what to do next, what to do of this cloth that has now become stiff ? From there I decided to explode it in many parts. I used mathematics from Congo, with the Ishango's calculator as a reference [the oldest in the world, more than 25,000 years old.] My ambition was to highlight the intelligence of the Congolese  people in this ancestral period. That's how I started to explode the fabric into several little squares, either twelve or four centimetres. The next step appeared as obvious to me, I needed to gather it all together now. I thought "Gather and rebuild this fabric because it will never leave Africa". It is now a part of us, deep in our roots, almost a second culture. This is how I have deconstructed to rebuild.

M.A : Did you anticipate the public reception of such an impactful work ?

A.N : The first time this work was shown for the public, most people were intrigued, faced with something that they had not experienced nor seen yet. It was like being faced with a story displaying a work of art and not the other way round. 

To reconcile fragments from the past and be at peace with our contemporary identity.

“It is time for each of us to take our history in hand, in any field whatsoever, write it where it does not exist, correct it where it goes wrong, rewrite it, where it has been erased, to tell it, to enhance it, and never ever quit. ”

A.N : This sentence is a cry from the heart. It came to my mind after I exploded this cloth. I pronounced last year at an international conference in Washington while I was the only black and African ambassador to represent the African and Congolese culture especially. I said it for the first time in public on that day because I felt it was finally time. 

M.A : Indeed, How can one feel when exposing this personal outlook which nevertheless has such a universal resonance?

A.N : When I start talking, my ego gets loose, I am just a human conveying a message. Changing a person, changing a culture is impossible, but you can change thinking. And to change thinking in a culture, it has to start with only one person and if I am that person, I know that another Congolese will be inspired to do so, then another one and one day it will even be a Chinese for example who will find what there is something wrong in their culture and who will not want to damage nor change it, but just to correct it. It is important to know how to move forward while preserving its culture and incorporating other cultures that come from far away because the world cannot only live in its ancestral originalities. We have always had had crossings of culture, crossroads of histories, but how we cross them shapes the future of a people. In Congo, the ancestral past has been forgotten a lot to the point of becoming void and embracing wax for example. However, we cannot be embracing and walking wearing wax and ignoring who we are.

M.A : We are seeing a new world coming in that direction though

A.N : There is higher awareness now. It's still mild but that’s already a good start ! I’d also say the diaspora has a different type of awareness compared to an African born. An African does not realise his hybridisation until he arrives in Europe. It’s a term myself did not use until I got to Europe myself. When you are in your country in the continent, speaking French, going to school, dressing in a certain way is part of everyday life. We do not necessarily realise that we live in a society with two civilisations which coexist at the same time: the ancient African civilisation and the Western European civilisation.

“Inside of me, I have a part of their civilisation. I am the alien still I have a part that ressembles them. And that part precisely, they do not acknowledge it. When they look at me, they think I'm not like them and that's when I realise there is something wrong.”

This is where us living in the West, far away, start this quest, looking in the past, to find out where did the rupture took place, and how to recover what was there before that we lost. Rearrange even a little bit things. 

M.A : Do we cure from this wound ?

A.N : We have to build the new, and if everyone realises this, together we will build something huge and strong. I think that to this day, Westerners know that if Africans people manage to realise their hybridisation and really create bridges with their history, they will go beyond the limits of their civilisation and reach new heights. We still have a lot of hidden things within our civilisations: in messages, in symbols, in the tales of our ancestors. If we find each of these fragments and revisit them today, especially with our technologies, we are going to discover incredible things that will move Africa forward.

Positive outlook on the future

A.N : My advice to each is to reconnect with yourself. When we refuse to connect with ourselves, we seek to and refer to and from someone else. You have to go look at your history first. If in my ancestral history there were, for example, textiles with incredible techniques, why can't I start by learning these techniques and reworking them with today's means? Why start by learning the techniques of the West? In these techniques, you will find their history, their culture that made what they are today. Why not go looking within your origins to define yourself ?

In politics for example, despite many years, we still cannot find the solution in the country. This is because we have an operating model based on Western civilisation. However, there is within us an ancestral political foundation that we have abandoned, which is within our blood, in our behaviour and in our way of life. It creates two different flows that are in conflict inside and outside of us. We have to go back to find out how ancestral societies functioned and understand how we function in order to be able to add then  democracy that is of Western construct to improve the well-being in our country.

A person who loves to talk for example, all he has to do is go at his grandparents, look for all these beautiful stories that existed in which we find fragments of information, education, morals, manners and know-how. Go find these tales there, rework them and tell them again, to push the oratory art. Writing, letters is a tradition closely tied to the West, why not promoting ours ?

Artist and Woman

Identity is a running theme through the work of the multi-skilled artist. Asia Nyembo navigates through her multiple identities and never stops questioning the origins of preconceptions, especially when it comes to her identity as a woman in arts.

A.N : I have explored women through different works, all women, not just African women. As  women, we sometimes have a hard time realising our power yet we have so much potential within us. Each woman has the ability within her to make change in this world, in her continent, her country or her family or simply within her and this in various directions. If men have taken the power to dominate women over time and put her aside, it is partly because men are aware of this potential. A great part of ancient civilisations in Africa or elsewhere have valued women by adopting matriarchal cultures at the point in history. The question is should we wait for men to realise this again or is it not up to us women to realise it and go revive that personal potential we have ? I often represent this hidden power of women in my work. This hidden power within us that we just have to look for. If we look for it, we end up finding it, and when we do find it, we become strong human beings.

M.A : Even more so as a woman and an artist.

A.N : A woman who is an artist is a woman who if she is not strong, will stop halfway because it is a world of fights. You have to assert yourself every moment for your work to be accepted. For example in my country and in other cultures it is still delicate. Women often give up and fast. From an outward look, some take the bets and predict that it will take a marriage or a child to come for all the art to end up in the kitchen. Something I have heard many times. It’s only when a woman keep going and creating despite these life events and only there that she will be recognised as a strong woman by her fellow artists. 

The thing is a woman is strong in what she is, from the beginning. She is the one choosing this path and who will have to fight against all these comments coming from the mouth of men. I put the emphasis on the ability to have a great inner strength ready to fight against anything negative that will come from the outside, anything that will come to destroy the artist who is inside. If we can get past this, be strong from within, we will succeed. Being a woman and an artist is a long fight.

M.A : Did you really on this inner strength during the past months ?

AN : The past months have disrupted many aspects of my work. Everything stopped for a moment. I lost exhibitions, the Dakar Biennale was postponed [...]

We [the artists] have lost a lot of the moments and opportunities and this has impacted our work. From a psychological point of view too. I had to call on my inner strength. To hold out, I transformed this period into a personal residence, which allowed me to create new works and to pursue my work and historical research. We adapt. We take the time to create new projects, to write them, to put them in place before finding again seeming normality.

Asia Nyembo Mireille recently partook in AKAA Fair and is also programmed at the next Dakar Biennale.